I’m sure you’ve seen them, know the type.

You’ve seen them at the dentist’s office or the physician’s or optometrist or orthopedic surgeon’s office.

Or at one of the four-star restaurants or haute retail shops where they gladly pay $800 for an imitation silk blouse and pray that no one asks them what it costs so that they can stammer innocently how foolish they’d been in purchasing it and — with their modesty and humility firmly established — feel free to brag to everyone what it cost to establish with one comment their fashion bona fides and their financial class. And then they’ll wear it for one season and send it to the back rack in the chthonian depths of a cavernous walk-in closet.

And you’ve noticed that they almost always use the same strategy.

They are walking toward the exit – often someone else will be checking out – and then they’ll flounce and scurry back to the desk or cashier jutting forward a small square piece of paper.

“Do you cover the parking? I parked in the garage downstairs.”

They take the cheap metal tokens or the paper that has been rubberstamped and head back to the door with the expression of complete bliss that they have gotten their parking for free.

These are the types walking the halls of most corporations in America.

Not all, certainly. But a large majority. Let’s call it the 80-20 rule, since this is such a popular management tactic for those in corporations who are insecure and want to be able to base their decisions on an external decision-making process that they can later blame if the plan falls apart.

Anyone who has spent any time in Corporate America knows that eight out of 10 women — not all employees and not all women — are this type.

The other two, they’re just normal, healthy individuals who work, go through their day, try to laugh when they can, avoid the politics and drama and just want to go home when the day is done and forget about work.

But the eight. They are the ones that everyone in the corporation cannot help but notice, like a stench drifting from a public restroom.

These are the ones that live for their jobs – excuse me – their careers. Because the career to them is more than a mere job. It is empowerment. It is meaning. It is victory over all those that have ever made them feel insecure (as we all have, by the way, but we get over it without needing medication and therapy and a job as a manager to make us right).

These are the ones that, when they are given a bit of power, use it ruthlessly to control others, to domineer, to conquer.

The career provides those daily jets of air that pump their egos and keep them over-inflated until they begin to deflate toward morning at which point, the new day starts and the conquering and trampling and clawing begin anew to reflate the ego.

I call these women the free-parkers.

Most of us spool out successes every day like a cable spun across the floor of the Atlantic, successes that we barely notice and, if we do, only notice because of the drudgery that it causes, the time that it is taking us from something else, and we rarely hear a word of praise and we don’t seek it.

But not the free-parkers, not the 80 per-centers.

These bask in each success and do not let even the most minor achievement pass by without demanding, “Did you see what I did? Did you see how I did it, how I put so much pressure on him he gave up a Sunday to get the job done and then I told him it wasn’t needed and took his work and redid it and called it my own? Did you see how I managed him? Validate me! Yes, please, Validate me!”

And the fools in these corporations controlled by the PC gestapo respond reflexively, “Great job! I knew you could do it! No one can do it quite like you! You are the smartest! The most courageous! The strongest!”

“Yes! Yes! Validate me, please! I beg you, please validate me!”

“You can do anything! You should be running this company! You are the most important one here!”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! I really am, aren’t I. At times, I have my doubts, but then you validate me and I know I was foolish to have doubted.”

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